The Edge of Hell

by William W. Johnstone

The glance the Apache lifted to him was almost as cold as the desert air around them.

  “I will start looking for more warriors to fight the white men,” Bodaway said, as if the answer to Becker’s question should have been completely obvious.

  “That can wait a while. Why don’t you come with me? I know we were supposed to split up after this rendezvous, but there’s no reason to do that now.”

  “You mean since all my men are dead.”

  “I’m sorry about that, I truly am,” Becker said in response to the flat comment. He knew what Bodaway had to be thinking, and he wanted to head that off if he could. “In a way it’s my fault they’re dead. I understand why you’d feel that way. You were there at Slaughter’s ranch because of me. I knew you’d probably lose a few men, but . . .” Becker sighed and shook his head. “Damned if I ever thought you’d lose all of them. I really didn’t, Bodaway.”

  The Apache regarded him through dark, slitted eyes for a long moment before saying, “All the way here, I thought I would kill you as soon as I saw you. As you said, I blamed you for their deaths. I wanted to avenge them by killing you. But that would not bring them back . . . and you did not take their lives. Slaughter and his people did. The Mexican don and his people did.”

  “That’s right,” Becker said, trying not to sound too eager to exploit what Bodaway had just said. “And you can take your vengeance on them if you come with me.”

  Bodaway straightened to his feet. He asked, “Will they not come after the cattle?”

  “Slaughter will. I’ve heard enough about him to know that. I figured Rubriz would come with him, but you said he was wounded.”

  “Or killed.”

  “Or killed,” Becker agreed with a shrug. “But I’m not going to accept that until I know for sure. I’d planned to make him come to me begging on his knees, but if he’s still at the ranch that’ll work out even better.”

  Bodaway frowned slightly and said, “I never really understood what you mean to do.”

  That was because he had never really explained it to anybody else, not even Woodbury or any of his other men, Becker thought. The details of the plan had remained fluid in his mind, capable of being changed to take circumstances into account, and as things were turning out, that was good.

  Bodaway was perhaps the only person cunning enough to follow his reasoning, though, so he said, “Your raid on the ranch was a distraction to allow us to steal Don Eduardo’s herd.”

  Bodaway nodded.

  “But the rustling was a distraction, too, to lure nearly everybody away from the ranch. I figured Don Eduardo would come along with Slaughter and try to get the herd back. That way I could take some of my men and circle around and go back to the ranch. There wouldn’t be enough of Slaughter’s crew there to stop us from taking over.”

  “But you thought the Mexican would not be there.”

  “Yeah, but his wife would be. With her as a hostage, Rubriz will do anything I tell him to, even give himself up to me so I can torture him.”

  Bodaway nodded gravely and said, “This is much hate in you, to go to so much trouble instead of just killing the man.”

  “Just killing him’s not enough. I want Don Eduardo Rubriz to suffer as much as possible, in as many ways as possible, before he dies.”

  “Why?” Bodaway asked.

  “Because the son of a bitch murdered my father.”

  Chapter 11

  Viola stood next to the sofa where Don Eduardo lay and looked down at his slack, pale face. If not for the fact that she could see his chest rising and falling, she might have thought that death had already claimed him.

  An hour had passed since John and the others left in pursuit of the rustlers. The doctor still hadn’t arrived from Douglas. Viola glanced at the big grandfather clock in one corner of the parlor to check the time.

  She would give it another half-hour, she decided, and then she would have to try to extract the bullet from Don Eduardo’s body herself.

  A soft step sounded behind her. Viola turned and saw Belinda standing there.

  “How is he?” the blonde asked.

  “The same as before. He’s sleeping.”

  “Unconscious, you mean,” Belinda said in an accusing tone.

  “I’m not sure I’d call it that. His body is doing everything it can to preserve the strength it has left.”

  “How long are you going to wait for the doctor?”

  “I was just thinking about that,” Viola admitted. “Another thirty minutes or so. That much time shouldn’t make any—”

  Before she could finish, a small Mexican boy, the son of one of the married vaqueros, ran into the room and said excitedly, “Señora, señora, someone comes.”

  “Who is it, Paco?” Viola asked.

  “A man in a buggy, señora. That’s all I know.”

  It was enough, Viola thought. She knew that Dr. Neal Fredericks drove a buggy when he called on his patients. She put a hand on the boy’s head for a second, said, “Gracias, Paco,” and hurried to the door.

  Belinda was right behind her.

  Viola looked west along the road leading to Douglas and saw the buggy drawn by a tall, sturdy horse. A thin plume of dust rose into the sky behind it.

  Another man rode alongside the vehicle. That would be Orrie, the cowboy John Slaughter had sent to town to fetch the physician. As they came closer, Viola recognized the horse Orrie was riding as Pacer, and seeing the roan confirmed her hunch.

  “Is that him?” Belinda asked anxiously. She shaded her eyes with her hand, even though the sun was behind them. “Is that the doctor?”

  “It is,” Viola said.

  “Thank God.”

  Viola looked at the other woman and said, “You sound like you mean that.”

  “You’ll never understand how things are between my husband and me,” Belinda snapped. “Don’t even waste your time trying.”

  “Fine,” Viola said. Maybe she was being too judgmental, although she didn’t think so. But either way, it didn’t really matter right now. Saving Don Eduardo’s life was the important thing.

  Dr. Fredericks brought the buggy to a halt in front of the picket fence. Viola already had the gate open, ready for him. He climbed out of the buggy, a tall, heavyset man with a squarish head and close-cropped gray beard. He wore a gray suit and a flat-crowned black hat and carried a black medical bag.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Slaughter,” Fredericks greeted Viola as he came into the yard. “I hear you had quite a commotion out here last night.”

  “You could call it that,” Viola said.

  “I knew about your party and thought I might attend, but I was called away. It was Mildred Bankston’s time. Triplets, can you believe that? It was quite an ordeal for everyone involved. Anyway, I didn’t get back until long after midnight. That’s why your man had to wait for me.”

  Belinda said, “Can’t you stop talking and go inside?”

  Fredericks looked at her and raised his bushy eyebrows in surprise. Viola said, “This is Doña Belinda Rubriz, doctor. Her husband is in the worst shape of those who were injured in the attack.”

  “Then by all means let’s go have a look at him,” Fredericks said. He gave Belinda a curt nod and added, “I’m sorry to be making your acquaintance under such trying circumstances, ma’am.”

  Belinda didn’t say anything else. She followed Viola and the doctor into the house.

  Viola took Fredericks straight to Don Eduardo. He pulled a chair over next to the sofa and set his bag on it, then untied the bandages and pulled them back to reveal the bullet hole in the wounded man’s side.

  Belinda gasped a little at the sight of it, but Viola thought the hole actually looked pretty good, considering. The flesh around it wasn’t too red, and she didn’t see any streaks running away from the wound, which would have been a sign that it was festering and spreading.

  Dr. Fredericks seemed to agree with her. He said, “It appears you did a fine job here, Mrs. Slaughter. I believe your
man said the bullet is still in the victim’s body?”

  “That’s right. We didn’t find any other wounds, so it has to be.”

  Fredericks nodded.

  “The next thing to do is get it out. I’ll give the don just a bit of laudanum to make sure he remains unconscious through the procedure.”

  “See?” Belinda whispered to Viola. “I told you he was unconscious, not just asleep.”

  Fredericks heard her anyway and chuckled.

  “What you call it doesn’t matter, Señora Rubriz. What’s important is that your husband doesn’t wake up and start moving around while I’m going after that bullet.”

  “Should we try to move him?” Viola asked. “We can put him on the dining room table so you can operate there.”

  Fredericks shook his head and said, “No, I’d prefer that he stay right where he is until we get that bullet out of him.” He took off his hat and coat and started rolling up his shirt sleeves. “I’ll be needing some hot water and clean rags.”

  Viola turned and nodded to one of the servants standing nearby. The woman hurried off to fetch what the doctor wanted.

  “Now, before I start this procedure let me take a quick look at the other wounded, so I’ll have an idea of what else I’ll need to do this morning,” Frederick said.

  Ten minutes later, after checking his other patients, Fredericks perched on a chair next to the sofa where he could reach Don Eduardo and got ready to extract the bullet. He had a long, slender probe and a pair of forceps in his hands. Before he got to work he looked over his shoulder and said to Belinda, “You might want to step out of the room, madam.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” she declared. “I’m going to stay right here until my husband is out of danger.”

  “All right, but I warn you, there’s liable to be more bleeding.”

  “I don’t care. I’ll be all right.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  Fredericks inserted the probe into the wound and began using it to search for the bullet. As he had warned Belinda, blood welled out of the bullet hole around the probe.

  Viola heard a faint moan and glanced over at the blonde. She saw how pale Belinda was, how wide her eyes were, and how hard she was breathing as she watched the operation. Viola moved a little closer to her.

  It was a good thing she did, because Belinda moaned again and her knees buckled. Viola was there to catch her under the arms and keep her from falling.

  Without looking up from what he was doing, Fredericks said, “Fainted, eh? That didn’t take long.”

  “About as long as I figured it would,” Viola said. “Doña Belinda seems to have a tendency toward passing out.”

  She motioned with her head, and a couple of servants hurried to take hold of Belinda and carry her over to an armchair. They lowered her into it gently.

  A few minutes later, Fredericks held up a misshapen lump of lead that he gripped with the forceps.

  “There it is,” he said to Viola as he showed the bullet to her. “I believe, considering its location, that it didn’t damage any major organs or fracture any ribs. The don was lucky. He lost enough blood to make him pass out, but as long as the wound is kept clean, with plenty of rest he ought to be fine.”

  “I’m glad to hear that, doctor.”

  Fredericks used one of the rags to wipe blood off his hands as he stood up.

  “Now I’ll get started on the other cases.” He smiled and added, “When you and your husband throw a party, Mrs. Slaughter, it’s always quite an event. I’ll be sure to attend the next one—just in case my services are needed again!”

  * * *

  “Where the hell are they going with those cows?” Stonewall asked as the trail of the stolen herd continued to lead north toward the Chiricahuas. “Do they plan to drive ’em all the way up to Galeyville or around the mountains to Fort Bowie?”

  Slaughter rode at the head of the group of pursuers with Stonewall on his right and Santiago Rubriz on his left. Santiago hadn’t explained his earlier comment about his father being shot by an American partner, and Slaughter hadn’t pressed him for details. He didn’t figure it was any of his business. If Santiago wanted to talk about it, he could.

  Instead Santiago asked now, “Could they sell the herd to the army at this fort? Soldiers always need beef.”

  “It would be a shame to use those cattle for beef,” Slaughter said. “I bought them to improve the bloodline of my herd, so I want them around for a while.”

  “They still have my father’s brand on them, not yours, Señor Slaughter,” Santiago pointed out.

  And since Mexican brands most closely resembled a skillet full of writhing snakes, those markings wouldn’t mean anything to an army quartermaster, Slaughter mused. All the rustlers had to do was convince the quartermaster at Fort Bowie that the stock was legally theirs, and they might collect for it.

  For that matter, Slaughter knew that the army sometimes turned a blind eye to the possibility that animals with Mexican brands might be what they called over in Texas “wet cattle,” meaning they had been driven across the Rio Grande—usually in the dead of night.

  As Santiago had said, soldiers needed beef, and the men charged with providing it often weren’t too particular about where it came from.

  Those thoughts ran through Slaughter’s mind, and then he said, “That may be what they try to do, but it seems like a lot of trouble for what they’d make out of the deal. This is a small herd. The payoff won’t be big enough once it’s split up among them to make it worthwhile—especially since they had to run the risk of involving those Apaches, too.” He frowned. “I have a hunch that there’s something else going on here, but I’ll be damned if I can figure out what it is.”

  “We’ll just catch up to the varmints and ask ’em,” Stonewall said.

  Slaughter chuckled and said, “Yes, that might be the best plan.”

  They kept moving, stopping now and then to switch horses and let the animals rest a bit. The sun had risen high enough now to generate a considerable amount of heat.

  It was during one of those pauses, while Slaughter had his hat off and was using his sleeve to wipe sweat off his forehead, that he noticed something. Several miles away to the east, a thin haze of dust rose in the air as if a large group of riders was on the move over there, heading south.

  It couldn’t be the rustlers doubling back, he told himself. The dust was moving too fast for that. They couldn’t push those cattle at such a pace and hope to control them.

  A cavalry patrol, he thought. That was a more likely answer. Possibly word of the Apache attack had reached Fort Bowie, and the commander there had sent a troop to check it out and chase any renegades who were left.

  If that was the case, they were too late for that, Slaughter thought. By now all those Apaches would be buried in shallow graves.

  He put the matter out of his mind for now and told the men to mount up. They were moving out again.

  Whoever those riders in the distance were, they had nothing to do with the deadly errand on which John Slaughter found himself occupied today.

  Chapter 12

  Ned Becker knew that Bodaway was still curious about the origins of his vendetta against Don Eduardo Rubriz, but the Apache didn’t ask any questions. Bodaway wouldn’t; that wasn’t the sort of man he was. He would wait for Becker to offer details, and if that never happened, Bodaway would just put the whole matter out of his mind.

  As with his conversation about his mother with Herb Woodbury the night before, though, the idea of letting out some of the demons that gnawed on his brain and guts appealed to Becker. During a halt to rest the horses around midmorning, Becker went over to his old friend and said, “I’ll tell you about it if you want.”

  “It is nothing to me whether you do or not,” Bodaway answered without looking at him. He had been given a horse to ride, and he was checking the animal’s saddle.

  “My father was Rubriz’s partner,” Becker said. “He’d done some fightin
g in Mexico. He went down there on a filibuster and stayed to work for one faction or another. Those Mexes are hell on wheels when it comes to overthrowing their government. Doesn’t matter who’s in charge, there’s always a revolution brewing.”

  Bodaway grunted. He was starting to look interested in spite of himself.

  “He and Rubriz became friends somehow,” Becker went on. “When the side Rubriz supported came to power, he wound up with a big land grant in northern Sonora. He asked my father to help him start a ranch there. Before they left Mexico City, though, they each got married. Their wives were high-born ladies with mostly Castilian blood.”

  Becker started trying to roll a cigarette as he talked, but when he mentioned his mother his fingers began to shake. She had gone from the pampered surroundings of a wealthy family in Mexico City to selling herself in an Arizona Territory cavalry camp. Was it any wonder he hated the man responsible for that downfall?

  He crumpled the half-rolled quirly and threw it aside.

  “They worked together side by side to establish that ranch,” Becker continued. “They fought Indians and bandits and drought and sickness. And they made something out of the place. I was born there.”

  “You are fortunate the warriors of my people never visited your ranch,” Bodaway said. “You probably would not have survived infancy.”

  Becker responded with a grim chuckle.

  “I reckon maybe you and me were meant to be partners, Bodaway. That’s why the Apaches never tried to kill my folks.”

  Bodaway just grunted.

  Becker said, “Things went along all right for a while. No telling how long they would have stayed that way if Rubriz hadn’t started sniffing around my mother. It wasn’t bad enough he wanted to cheat on his wife. He had to go after his own partner’s wife.”

  “This is none of my affair,” Bodaway said.

  The story had started to spill out of Becker, though, and he didn’t want to stop it. He said, “When my pa found out what was going on, he wanted to take me and my mother and leave the ranch. But he couldn’t bring himself to just walk away from everything he’d done. He had put as much time and hard work into the place as Rubriz had. He told Rubriz he had to buy out his half. If he didn’t, then my father was going to send word to my mother’s family back in Mexico City about what was going on, and to the family of Rubriz’s wife, too.”